Let’s Go To The Source

Where do you get your news information … from family, friends, coworkers, newspapers, radio, TV or the Internet? Does it matter? The source really counts and, increasingly, it’s not newspapers.

The number of Americans who say newspapers are an important source of information continues to decline, according to a survey by the The Center for the Digital Future at the USC Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism.

Some 56 percent of Internet users surveyed agreed with the statement that newspapers were an important or very important source of information, while 68 percent said television was, and 78 percent said the Internet was, according to Mathew Ingram, blogging for gigaom.com.

The findings are part of the Annenberg School’s ongoing Digital Future Project, which has been surveying Americans on their views and behavior related to the Internet for 10 years.

Interestingly, the Annenberg survey also found a growing number of online users do not believe information they find electronically is reliable. A majority of users said less than half of the information they get from the Internet is reliable.

Americans increasingly see the Internet as an important source of information, despite the fact they view much of that information as unreliable, according to Ingram.


Depending on how you feel about Internet users in general, it’s either an example of contradictory behavior, or a sign of healthy skepticism about online media, Ingram writes.

The survey’s findings are perplexing because a large amount of Internet news content can be traced to an original source which, typically, is a newspaper. Still, it’s like the old chicken-or-egg saying – which came first?

Often news breaks online before it appears in print and the electronic version, because of print deadlines, remains fresher with frequent updates. It's now versus yesterday.

One of the things newspaper editors and reporters always pride themselves on is serving as a reliable and credible source of vital information for the public interest in a highly competitive marketplace. This blog’s co-author knows this from 30 years in newspaper newsrooms.

Sometimes it’s sensational news, like corruption at City Hall; sometimes, it’s merely about the fact property taxes are rising yet again. But the news, in dead tree format, is usually about things that matter to you, from the immigration battle in Arizona to parking meter charges in your downtown.

Regardless of whether you agree with a newspaper’s editorial policy, you can be certain any paper worth reading always goes the distance to separate itself from the competition by pursuing stories that really matter to readers. It’s the primary mission.

A secondary mission, especially for most community papers, is to serve as “the paper of record” in documenting key events (fires, accidents, elections) and individuals (profiles, obits, achievements) for historical purposes.

With growing online access to newspaper archives, this witness-to-history service becomes even more important. If it appeared first in newsprint after 1990, chances are it was archived electronically by the paper.

It’s not that newspapers are no longer relevant, but they are stuck in a 20th-century delivery format – print on paper. With rapid advances in technology, especially electronic devices such as the iPad, a faster and more portable format is in high demand by our hurry-up society.

Importance and credibility work in tandem in delivering information, regardless of the format. One only needs to look at the high traffic generated by the websites belonging to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to understand the relationship.

Part of the reason viewers flock to NYT and WSJ online is directly connected to the print papers’ branded reputation (political views aside) for being the Source of reliable information. That belief follows to a lesser extent as you move from big-city metros to small-town community papers.

Brick-and-mortar operations for print still play a role in our fast-paced world as the foundation for what we see online. WMB and other blogs rely on information from websites whose quality can vary greatly, depending on the source. Attribution plays a big role at WMB; we make liberal use of links.

JohnDoe.com is not going to carry the same weight as cnn.com, nor is a content mill piece by a “citizen journalist” versus a story written by a Times staffer. Information gathering still requires a consumer-beware attitude, which probably explains some of contradictory findings in the Annenberg survey.

While there are infinitely more choices today for information junkies than before the Internet and cable TV, the fact is we all place value on the source of what we hear and see.

Maybe Brian Williams' take on unemployment figures means more to you than Wolf Blitzer's version of that story? Did they do some direct reporting, or did their researchers do the grunt work? Did they offer attribution for the information? The source always matters.

If newspaper owners and executives are smart street-wise folks, they will find ways to brand their print and online operations as compatible and profitable sources that target key sectors of public interest.

You can’t put the information genie back into the bottle in the Internet Age, but you can make it do your bidding with quality material pushed via varied formats that reach consumers where they live.

As for me, I practice what I preach at writenowworks.com.